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[the_pied_piper]

So artist Katie Paterson has used records made of ice to record the sounds of 3 Icelandic glaciers melting.

Glacier crackling

So as to give the thread some meaning, what do people think of when art meets music? Is this something that can ultimately be used for other purposes or is it really just for show and amusement?

EDIT: Further down the page there is another video of artist Claudia Märzendorfer actually recording music onto ice with amazing results. The ice lasts about 2 hours before melting, I believe.

[David_Dovey]

art [...] music

huh

[Yakob]

baby

[a pack of wolves]

So as to give the thread some meaning, what do people think of when art meets music? Is this something that can ultimately be used for other purposes or is it really just for show and amusement?

I don't really get what you mean. What other purposes? What do you mean by show and amusement?

Anyway, I like it. Reminds me of Bill Fontana, I've really enjoyed the sound pieces he's done in Leeds. The production of the records brings up nice lines of thought, their impermanence and transitory nature inserting these qualities into the monoliths that are glaciers that can be hard for us to really conceptualise. Then you've got the human manipulation an destruction of natural forms for our own ends, but nicely problematised by the fact that this manipulation is forming something of worth. Plus they sound nice.

On the subject of art records, for anyone in Glasgow there's a launch of Ruth Barker's LP of her performance In The Beginning on Thursday the 10th of December at Aye Aye Books in the CCA on Sauchiehall Street. Apparently the records will be free at the launch. More info on the piece here, more on the artist here.

[De_El]

I think what the_pied_piper is getting at when he says "Is this something that can ultimately be used for other purposes or is it really just for show and amusement?" is the risk of a project like this becoming little more than a curiosity as opposed to a compelling piece.  The problem though, of whether art is relegated to the realm high-end curio or if it's viewed as a more worthwhile object, largely depends on its reception by communities.  Certainly there has to be something about the work itself that compels a viewer or consumer of the concept, but it's not up to the artist how seriously their audience chooses to take their work or how much the audience chooses to really think about the work. 

[the_pied_piper]

Yeah, I realised that I wasn't quite clear with what I meant but De_el has it pretty much. Is this something that could become more widely used, for example at a festival like Frequency that happens at night time in the Alps or is it really just a curiosity piece to be done by a handful of people?

[a pack of wolves]

Just because an artistic practice isn't something that can be utilised on a wide scale doesn't mean it's a curiosity. If you're working on something that's specific to a particular place, like three glaciers in Iceland, it might well be the right approach to use something that isn't going to make sense in many other contexts. Besides, with conceptual art it often isn't appropriate to keep repeating something. So no, I don't think records made from ice is something that you're going to see in the practice of many artists, but that doesn't mean this work should be dismissed as a curiosity.

[Yayniall]

I prefer Under Pressure Records.